My Sweet Lady is Chairman of Family Sanuk, Ltd, and I am the Chief Executive Officer. This means that decisions about strategic direction are ultimately her prerogative, while executing those strategies in my department. Obviously, there is a lot of crossover between the two departments. Some things are strategically sound but logistically possible. Other things may be expedient, but this does not make them a good fit with our overall mission. Up until recently, one area of disconnect between vision and implementation has been a ramping up of the proposed composting operation.
From a vision standpoint, we have been in full agreement about the need to extract value from our solid waste stream by repurposing as much of our surplus food as possible. The choke point has been in putting together the capital necessary to invest in infrastructure improvements which would allow us to scale up a nutrient re-capturing operation. Instead, we have had to grow incrementally. Last year we realized Phase I: foodstuff growth matrix. While not quite up to expectations, our results in Q2-3 2009 were positive enough to encourage us to continue with the overall initiative.
My Sweet Chairman identified an opportunity to leverage our existing liquid capital to make additional enhancements to out physical plant which would allow us to close the loop between consumption and production. As she had calendared an off-site for herself during the sale window for this equipment, my Sweet Lady deployed Tallulah and myself to implement the purchase. Knowing demand in this segment would be strong, I determined that we should enter the market early enough to secure our position. Therefore, having risen early to complete Saturday’s training (a 19 miler +/-), I did not pause to consider hitting my personal nutrition target or adding value to the layers of Tallulah’s clothing.
When we arrived at the remote site, Tallulah and I quickly experienced negative growth patterns in our enthusiasm for the enterprise. In addition to the increased incidences of “breeze” and “wind”, I was beginning to detect a rapid increase in gastrointestinal activity which would require me to provide some counterbalancing inputs if they were to not develop into a trend. The surge of interest within the composting space beat analyst’s expectations, so we were looking at a fairly crowded marketplace. Fortunately, the supply chain logistics had been well rationalized thereby reducing our wait time as much as possible.
Based on her lack of negative pressure on the process, Tallulah received a deferred compensation equal to a gumball, a raspberry lemonade, and 5 Mike-n-Ike’s. I chose to receive the classic Cinnebon and coffee which are allowed under the “Run 2 Eat” rule. Later that afternoon, my Sweet Lady oversaw the installation of our new capital investment, and we have begun implementation of our facilities usage plan. We are highly optimistic about the long-term upside potential of this venture.